Bursting Through
by bulletproof
Summary: An opened doorway sends Buffy careening back into Angel's life. Post-'The Gift'.


**b u r s t i n g . t h r o u g h**   
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)   
characters owned by joss whedon.   
'bursting through' by bic runga. 'easy' by whoever faith no more covered.   
post-Angel's shanshu (the event) and a few years post 'The Gift' (the ep - ie. Buffy was never brought back by Willow).   
_//character//_ indicates who's talking. 

**1**

**e a s y - sunday morning**  
  
_//Angel//_

Life with Fred is easy. 

Always was and, as I gaze at her placid features dozing on my arm, I know it always will be. 

There's something so incredibly serene about her face, you can't help but get lost in the smooth planes, the easy contours of her cheeks, her brows, her lips. 

Nothing is wrong as soon as her soft hand slides into mine. 

I've been staring at her face for maybe hours, maybe minutes, I can't tell. The gentle afternoon sun washing warmth over my exposed skin lulls me into this state of half-sleep, half-consciousness. I feel our hearts beat collectively, slow, sweet, steady. 

I can't remember a calm that was quite like this. 

She shifts and sighs and I smile at the small sound. She even lilts in her sleep. 

Her voice is the most paradoxical source of calm. The deceptive hum of activity that always surrounds her makes her glow with the slightest tinge of red in her flustered cheeks and there I find my tranquility. The little bits of her babbling tongue catch on my ear like symphony, like liquid honey, smooth and sweet. 

I could find an infinite number of things in her that give me sanctuary. 

I could sink in her aura alone. 

Her eyes flutter like a feather-fly of wings that opens her soul to me, beaming and bright like starlight and sunshine and a thousand luminous things. 

"Hey," she whispers, soft and light but still ground in the sleep that lingers in her being, "you been watchin' me all this time?" 

"A little," I murmur, as if anything else would jolt me from this dream, "did I wake you?" 

"Mmm," she moans, more like a purr as she buries her face in my neck and mumbles against my skin, "I could feel you watching me." 

"I'm sorry," I grin, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear to uncover the soft fullness of her cheek. 

"No," she assures me, lifting her head to look at me, "it makes me feel safe. Loved." 

My mind flickers back, unconsciously fast, to a similar scene of golden brown limbs draped beyond recognition across my contrasting pale. 'Safe', she'd said between kisses, 'Loved'. 

I close my eyes to ward off the memories, no longer 'safe' and 'loved', but 'buried', 'past', 'over'. 

'Dead'. Oh God, Buffy... 

I feel questioning fingers caress my cheek back to the present, back to Fred, and I kiss her softly, sweetly, thoroughly, no more of grief, no more of three years dead, three years buried. 

Smiling, she draws back and leans her forehead against mine, "I like waking up with you." 

'I like seeing you first thing in the morning,' the other she echoes inside. 

"So what did you do today that left you so beat, sleeping beauty?" I tease, a million other echoes threatening to barrage my mind. 

"Well," she hops up, sitting upright to tell her day's story, "I called the florist and the caterer today, and that was a bit headache-y, so I called it a day on the wedding planning and went back to my books." 

I smile at the light that infuses her eyes, just as it does everytime she speaks of her books, that eclectic collection of dialects and tongues immortalised on pages stolen from other realms. 

She bounces up from her seat, excited beyond the telling of it, "I think I opened a doorway, today, I...felt it." 

"Fred," I reach out for her hand, "we've talked about how you need to be...careful with these things." 

"It's fine," she sighs, "Wesley didn't think anything happened...and besides, even if I did open a hallway, it doesn't mean anyone had to have walked through it." 

A lurching in my stomach heralds an unearthly scream that sends Fred and I catapulting to the lobby. Gunn stands stoically still, holding Cordelia as she lets the last of the tremors quake through her body. 

I've heard the words a thousand times before she's even said them. 

"It's Buffy." 

**f r i e n d s - you'll never be**  
  
_//Angel//_

And that's how Buffy came back into my life. 

Our lives. 

I cast my gaze over to the table before me and feel the worst kind of edginess brewing in my stomach. My best friend, the love of my un-life and the girl I'm about to marry, all sitting 'round, planning my wedding. 

I don't care if I got my humanity back, there is no God. 

"So, what do you think, Angel, the lilac or the lavender?" Fred asks, holding up some colour chart in front of me. 

"H-huh?" I snap back into reality, trying to focus, "aren't they the same thing?" 

Cordelia snorts and Buffy rolls her eyes, beating Cordy to the punch-line, "Angel's colour-knowledge ranges from black to more black, honey, you better leave the important choices up to us." 

Fred giggles and places the chart into Buffy's capable hands, "So is that why he wears dark all the time? I thought that was just a vampire thing." 

Cordy picks at the sleeve of my steel-coloured shirt, "In case you haven't noticed: with pulse, still wears black. You're just gonna haveta face up to the fact that you're marrying a spectrally-challenged man, Fred." 

"Hey!" I defend myself, batting away her hand, "It's a grey shirt, and I'll have you know, I was a great artist in my day." 

Buffy scrunches her nose and an unmistakable mischief lights her eye, "Be that as it may, you just don't have the high-cutting fashion threads to prove it, old man. And besides, as I recall, your forte was in charcoal." 

She stops abruptly and closes her eyes and I watch as the sun sets over her, its orangey yolk descending through red/pink/black L.A. air and washing through Buffy's body, heralding the night as it sings through her veins. 

There isn't one part of me that doesn't remember that siren song, that pulse and that beat that thrummed so insistently right below the surface of my skin, it drove me insane not to be within the caress of the night's inky depths. I can't feel it now. It gave me up when the night left this body and was replaced by a heartbeat and an ability to walk into the light. 

"Well," she says, jumping up, "better get out there and kill whatever it is that keeps me in this city." 

She stops just as abruptly at the door, a look of discomfiture replacing her usual self-assuredness, "Have I said 'Thankyou', lately, for letting me stay here?" 

"For only about the eighteen millionth time today," Cordy scowls half-heartedly, lips already turning into a comforting smile, "and besides, if Fred has anyone to blame for your still being here, it's The Powers That Be. They gave Angel's humanity back, you'd think they'd have gotten the memo that he wasn't all super-vamp anymore and couldn't take care of my visions." 

"It's fine," Fred assures with her usual warmth, "and hey, it's nice to have some real muscle around the hotel." 

I grimace as the girls giggle and find myself wondering, again, exactly how it is that they're all best friends now. God, you'd expect fireworks, hatred with a fiery passion... and that's just between Buffy and Cordelia. Instead they're just so... what's the word Buffy used for 'Seventh Heaven'? Hokey. 

I throw the colour chart at Buffy and miss horribly, her lithe body not even having to duck, "Get outta here, you. You have streets to patrol, damsels to distress." 

She laughs at my description of their interaction and twirls her stake at the door, blowing at its tip like a gun, "A superhero's work is never done." and, running her fingers across the invisible rim of a hat, she bows an 'adieu', "Ladies." 

* * * * *  
  
_//Buffy//_

I've been back for twelve days now, alive for twelve days... or at least that's as long as I remember being back for. 

They tell me that after I jumped into the portal that Glory opened, I didn't die, I must've slipped into another dimension, cos *poof*, here I am, all ten fingers and all ten toes cos Fred did some funky mojo incantation thing and opened a door that let me out. 

So... back. With the breathing and the heart beating and all the things I remember how to do. And some I don't. 

Like Dawn recovering from me being dead. Oh, that was a big ball of fun, what with the yelling and crying and screaming... no, wait, actually, that part I remember how to do very well, so let's get down to the real heart of the rant, shall we? 

Angel. No surprises there. Since when did Buffy's giant whirlwind of pain not revolve around him? Everything's so unbearably new with him, new life, new hotel, new heart...beat. 

Yeah, way to live in the land of denial, Buff. 

Who am I trying to kid? Angel's got a new girly on his arm, has moved on... and why shouldn't he have? I mean, God, it's been three years since I disappeared off the face of the earth, and it's not exactly like we were together when I left. 

And God help me I like her. Like really, genuinely, Buffy's-not-putting-on-a-face like her. Back in the day, I can see that she would've been a Scooby, class one research skills, love of Taco Bell and all. She's good for him. The way his eyes crinkle whenever she's talking, the way she makes him laugh, one of those deep, throaty laughs that I never thought Angel could've been capable of, the way she lights up his room... 

And I can't get in the way of that. I won't let it happen. If this is Angel's Shanshu, his redemption, then I'm... happy for him. 

I just wish I could be ten miles away from him happy for him... but of course, The Powers That Be like to keep me in this town with Cordy's visions, joy of all joys, and of course, patrol tonight was a non-event, so... stuck in L.A. 

And stuck orbiting his building, for some reason. I gave up patrolling hours ago and it's just now that I've realised I've been doing laps around his hotel. 

I can still... feel him, like I used to. My body still calls to him like it used to. I remember when I first woke up the only thing I knew, the only thing that told me I was alive was that I could feel him again, humming through my veins, and when he touched my cheek my whole world exploded into colour, into life. 

I remember grasping onto his hand and pulling myself into arms and feeling that if we just stayed this way, that if I never let go, I would never get so lost again, we would have each other and everything would... 

But then he let go, and a feminine hand draped itself across his shoulder and I was lost. 

I may never find my way home again. 

* * * * *  
  
_//Angel//_

Patrol ended about an hour ago. I know this because I've felt her circling the hotel for that long. It's strange, but even though the loss of my vampire senses has dulled so much else, I can still feel her so intensely, every step, every breath that expands and contracts, every beat that passes through her heart and careens through her stream of consciousness. I even feel her above Fred's movements in her sleep, Fred's breath as it tickles my neck in a rush of air, Fred's heart as it beats against mine. 

I once told Buffy that being around her, having her so close and yet not, wanting to lose myself in her and having to bite my lip constantly to stop myself from kissing her, it threw me. But now? Now that all the old reasons are gone, now that I'm allowed to be with her, to love her, to taste her, now that I'm supposed to be in love with someone else? 

It's more than confusing. It's deafening. It's drowning me. She's living here now, and everywhere she's been, everything she's touched, lives and breathes and screams of her. This place that I fell in love with Fred in, this sanctuary that once shielded me from all thoughts of Sunnydale now offers no solace, no peace, just noise, noise, glorious, overwhelming noise and the logic of the blood and beast of lust that has always spanned between us. 

I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't breathe because every thought, every dream, every waking moment is consumed by her. 

And she's fine. A-O-Captain America-'Kay. She smiles, she laughs, she quips, she spins her stake in the palm of her hand, just like she used to. She smells just like she used to. I feel her creaking, crying in my bones, just like I used to. 

And she's fine. 

Sometimes I wonder if she notices. That I'm a little less than fine. That sometimes I forget that I'm not supposed to look at her the way I used to. That I'm mesmerised by the swell of her lips. That I'm constantly memorising the exact hue of her eyes, the exact timbre of her laugh, just in case I won't ever look at her again, just in case she disappears from me again. 

Maybe that's why she's left to doing laps around the hotel, why she flinches away from looking me in the eye, why she can't bear to touch me, not for a millisecond, not ever because I'm smothering her, because I want her so badly I could scream. 

And she knows it. 

I used to think that she'd be my redemption, that we'd have a happily ever after, that we'd have a million whispers and a million caresses to share over the rest of our eternity, but now I'm left pretending not to love her and she's left pretending not to notice, not to care. 

**END PT 1/?   
  
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